The First Heartbreak...How it Paves the Way For Future Love

In your life you have most likely experienced the pain of a first heartbreak. Maybe you were sixteen and your first boyfriend or girlfriend trampled on your heart and dumped you for no good reason other than they were young and wanted to experience life...maybe it was your spouse who was your true first love that cheated on you...maybe you lost your first love to the icy grip of death. Whatever the case of your first heartbreak, most of us have had one at some point in our lives. But like every other experience in life, we have to learn from it or our first heartbreaks will be in vain.

"Tis' better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." - Alfred Lord Tennyson

Have you ever heard of the five stages of mourning? I think that this concept of different stages of the mourning process can also be applied directly to the first heartbreak experience. The reason is because in your first heartbreak, you are losing the person that you love...and it feels very much like a death in many ways.

1. Denial and Isolation: What do we first do when we lose someone that we love? We go into a state of denial - "No, he's not leaving me...he's just too busy to call..." or "No, she'll come back to me. She's just going through some personal things but she'll come back." At this point, we don't want to admit to ourselves that we are losing our first love. Our defenses are up, so therefore we block out any thought that this experience is actually happening and we isolate ourselves from others and sometimes from reality, in the process.

2. Anger: The next phase in mourning of the first heartbreak is anger. We all know why this phase comes into play so quickly. We are angry at the person who is breaking our heart mainly, but we could be angry at others, just depending on the entire situation. Maybe you were cheated on and felt betrayed by your first love, but you also had a desire to lash out against the person that your lover cheated with. These are all natural emotions and in my opinion, very much called for. I remember the anger the most out of the five phases, as it is usually the most intense phase of the mourning process.

3. Bargaining: The bargaining phase basically surrounds the "what-ifs". For example, "what if I had treated him better in this way, he might have stayed with me." Or "if I hadn't gone away so much, maybe she wouldn't have cheated on me." We are trying to gain a sense of control over a situation that is really not controllable. When we realize that no amount of bargaining with ourselves or our lovers will do any good, that is when the depression sets in...

4. Depression: The worst phase of the entire mourning process, especially in the mourning of a first heartbreak, is depression. Depression sucks us into a world of self-loathing and hopelessness, and is physically and mentally unhealthy...if you stay stuck in it for too long. As depression is just another phase of mourning, I believe that it is perfectly natural and part of the healing process. Without depression, the lesson to be learned from the first heartbreak might not come through to us right away.

5. Acceptance: The last and most relieving phase of mourning the first heartbreak is acceptance. We can't change what has happened, nor can we go back in time so we just have to accept the fact that our relationship is over. Just remember, there are other people in the world that are capable of loving you. But the most important aspect of acceptance is to learn to love ourselves.

Everyone experiences the phases of mourning after a first heartbreak. They may not always be in this order, for instance maybe some people might experience anger before the denial & isolation phase, or maybe some of us experience depression and bargaining before the anger phase. No matter what, emotions will be strong for us while going through a loss of this magnitude. The point is to learn from it.

If we never learned from any of our experiences in life, we would never grow or improve our outlook on life. If we wallowed in self pity and depression, we would never see the sunlight or just how beautiful life can be. We might also not be able to love ourselves and in the end, love another just as you have loved the first.

Life has many lessons to teach us, if we are willing and open to learning and growing. The first heartbreak is no exception to this rule. If we didn't learn how to love ourselves and therefore open our hearts to others, the first love and heartbreak would be pointless and given to the wind to whisk away forever.

After we have loved and lost for the first time, it is sometimes very difficult for us to let our guards down and open our hearts to another. Maybe we put up barriers between ourselves and possible mates. For me, I put up a facade that I was a tough, gothic woman who wanted nothing but to be by myself. When in reality, I was looking for my soulmate but didn't want to admit it to myself! Once I realized that my husband was my true love, I let those walls fall down and opened myself up to him and to true love.

I truly believe that the key to opening our hearts to others, after our first heartbreak or second or third heartbreak, is to learn to love ourselves. We can't love someone else if we don't love ourselves. And...we can't truly appreciate true love in all its beauty and joy if we don't experience a little heartbreak in the meantime.